What if Walt Disney was the producer of Looney Tunes/Walt Disney Animated Classics/The Wind in the Willows
The Wind in the Willows is a 1952 American animated fantasy comedy-drama adventure film produced by Walt Disney and based on the novel of the same name by Kenneth Grahame. It is the 15th Disney animated feature film and was originally released on February 10, 1952 by RKO Radio Pictures. It focuses on three anthropomorphised animals in a pastoral version of Edwardian England. While the film recieved mixed reviews on its initial release, it was a box-office success and proved to be ahead of its time and has since been regarded as one of Disney's greatest animated classics. Plot Fed up with spring cleaning, Mole ventures out of his underground home. He goes for a walk in the countryside and soon comes to a river where he meets and befriends Ratty (who lives there). Ratty takes Mole on a picnic, while he warns him of the Wild Wood and its inhabitants. Ratty then takes Mole to visit his friend J. Thaddeus Toad at Toad Hall, and Toad asks them to come with him on a caravan trip on the Open Road. Ratty really misses his home on the river but does not want to disappoint his friends. Later that day, a passing motor car causes the caravan to overturn into a ditch. Ratty threatens to have the law on the car driver, while Mole calms the horse, but Toad becomes entranced by the new machine, having been taken over by "motor-mania." As time goes by, Ratty and Mole can do nothing but look on as Toad buys and then almost immediately crashes his cars one after another. In winter, Ratty and Mole are extremely worried and they decide to call on Angus MacBadger, a friend of Toad's late father, to see if he has any suggestions; if there's anyone Toad will listen to, it's MacBadger. But Ratty fell asleep, refusing to take Mole to the Wild Wood. Mole then decides to go alone to the Wild Wood to see MacBadger. He asks a gang of weasels for directions to MacBadger's house, but they tells Mole the wrong way to go and he becomes scared and lost. His cry for Ratty echoed, and back at the river bank; it wakes him up. Ratty soon notices Mole's absence and finds a note written by Mole telling him where he has gone. Rat takes some pistols and a cudgel and hurries along to the Wild Wood to find him. After Ratty finds Mole, they literally stumble across MacBadger's house and knocks on the door. MacBadger, annoyed at his relaxing night being disturbed, opens the door and gets ready to tell off whoever it is who has interrupted his rest, but on seeing that it is Ratty and Mole outside, he lets them in. They warm themselves in front of the fire and MacBadger offers them each a hot drink. They discuss Toad's careless driving, which MacBadger tell them he could not doing nothing about it, but he suggets Ratty and Mole they will to talk with Toad instead. After they leave MacBadger's house, Ratty and Mole turn up at Toad Hall and try to tell Toad that what he is doing is wrong, and attempt to make him promise that he will never go near a motor car again. But Toad won't listen them, which Ratty and Mole put him under house arrest until he comes to his senses. However, Toad still longs for the open road, and tricks Rat and Mole into leaving him alone in the house. He secretly escapes his exile. After realizing Toad's escape, Mole becomes homesick and he and Ratty visit Mole's house. Some singing field mice turn up and after they have finish their song, Ratty and Mole invite them inside for a feast, but when they leave, they don't have very good news to share. The field mice tell Ratty and Mole that Toad has been arrested and charged with car theft, which the duo were consumed with guilt for their friend. At his trial, Toad represents himself and calls his horse Cyril Proudbottom as his first witness. Cyril testifies that the car which Toad was accused of stealing had already been stolen by a gang of weasels, who were the same ones who tricked Mole in the Wild Wood. Toad had entered a tavern where the car was parked and offered to buy the car from the weasels. However, since Toad had no money, he instead offered to trade Toad Hall for the car. The prosecutor and judge show disbelief towards the statement, so Toad then calls the Chief Weasel, the leader of the weasels, as a witness to the agreement; however, when told by Toad to tell the court what actually happened, the Chief Weasel falsely testifies that Toad had tried to sell the stolen car. Toad is found guilty on the spot and sentenced to twenty years in the Tower of London. Ratty and Mole make every effort to appeal his case, but with no success. In prison, Toad realizes that he is done with his manias and decides to turn over a new leaf. Fortunately, the jailer's daughter takes pity on him and helps him escape in the guise of a washerwoman. At first hitching a ride on a train, Toad finds the police in hot pursuit but is aided in his getaway by the engine driver. His next reprieve comes from a barge possum, but when he bungles a load of laundry, he angrily reveals himself to the barge possum and releases her horse in reaction to being kicked out of the barge. Pursued by policemen, he runs accidentally into a river. In the meantime, Mole discovers the weasels have take over Toad Hall and are in possession of the deed, revelaing Toad is innocent, at the same time, an old wayfarer visits Ratty and tells him all about the world beyond the riverbank. Overcome with wanderlust, Ratty follows him, but aborts his adventure when he finds Mole is lost in the woods searching him. they encounter each other, ostensibly with the help of a mystical wood-spirit called Pan (which MacBadger told Mole of). When Mole beigns talking with Rat, they found Toad, all wet by the lagoon in which he had fallen, which Mole tells Ratty about the weasels taking over Toad Hall, then Ratty also realizes about Toad's innocence. Knowing that the deed bearing Toad and the Chief Weasel's signatures would prove Toad's innocence, the three friends sneak into Toad Hall and take the document after a grueling chase around the estate. The film then ends with Toad regaining his house while it implied the weasels have been arrested and imprisoned. As Ratty and Mole celebrate the New Year with a toast to Toad, who they believe has completely reformed, Toad recklessly flies past on a Wright Flyer, as he has not truly reformed and developed a new mania for airplanes, which Mole says "Good' ol Toad". Cast *Colin Campbell - Mole *Claude Allister - Ratty *Eric Blore - J. Thaddeus Toad *Leslie Dennison - the Judge, Weasel #1 *Edmond Stevens - Weasel #2 *J. Pat O'Malley - Cyril, the Chief Weasel, Policemen *John McLeish - the Prosecutor *Campbell Grant - Angus MacBadger *Luana Patten - the Jailer's Daughter *June Foray (uncredited) - the Barge Possum *Mel Blanc - Sea Rat *Sebastian Cabot - the Narrator *The Rhythmaires - Additional Vocies Production In 1938, shortly after the release of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, James Bodrero and Campbell Grant pitched to Walt Disney the idea of making a feature film of Kenneth Grahame's 1908 children's book The Wind in the Willows. Bodrero and Grant felt that The Wind in the Willows, with its anthropomorphised animals, could only be produced using animation. Disney was skeptical, however, and felt it would be "corny" but acquired the rights in June that year. By early 1941, a basic script was complete, along with a song written by Frank Churchill called "We're Merrily on Our Way". Although it was intended to be a low-budget film to recoup the financial disaster of Fantasia (much like Dumbo), Disney hired many animators from the prestigious Bambi (which was nearly complete) and production began in May that year. Within six months, 33 minutes of the film had been animated. However, the studio's ability to produce full-length feature films had been drastically diminished, because World War II had drafted many of their animators into the military and had cut off their foreign release market. Thus, in October 1941, Disney put the production of The Wind in the Willows on hold. Then in December 1941, the United States became embroiled in the war after Pearl Harbor was attacked. The US government then asked the Disney studio to produce several propaganda films to help rally support for the war effort. During this time, much of Disney's feature output was made up of so-called "package films". Beginning with Saludos Amigos in 1942, Disney ceased making feature films with a single narrative due to the higher costs of such films, as well as the drain on the studio's resources caused by the war. Walt Disney and his artists felt that the animation of the cartoony anthropomorphized animals in The Wind in the Willows was far below the standards of a Disney animated feature. They then thinked that The Wind in the Willows could be better off being part of a package film. Under the title Three Fabulous Characters they tried to pair it up with Mickey and the Beanstalk and The Gremlins. However, after The Gremlins failed completely to materialize, the title was changed to Two Fabulous Characters. Then Mickey and the Beanstalk was cut from Fabulous Characters in favour of pairing it with Bongo and The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins under the title Fun and Fancy Free which was eventually released in 1947. Other segments were chosen for the film including Pecos Bill, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and The Brave Engineer with the retitled film All In Fun, but these three segments were later released separately with Pecos Bill being shown on Melody Time while The Legend of Sleepy Hollow was shown on The Adventures of Ichabod and Romeo & Juliet and The Brave Engineer was released as its own short. In 1948, after the studio's financial health started to improve again and it had made the studio returned to the production of full-length features with the pre-productions of Cinderella, Alice in Wondeland and Peter Pan, Walt started up the production of The Wind in the Willows again as a full-length. Writting While the production progresed, Walt Disney and his team made some changes, such as Mr. Badger, who was renamed "Angus MacBadger", being a minor character and appearing only in the Wild Wood sequence, despite he was intended to be Toad's bookkeeper, until Walt decided he was instead a minor character instead due to his fewer appearances in the story. Also, in the original story, Toad steals a motorcar and escapes from jail. This wouldn't do for the animated feature, since Walt felt the audience would lose sympathy for Toad. Finding most part of the story chronicle Toad's daring escape from prison, the team changed it to make Toad framed for stealing the car by the weasels instead. Also all the humans from the novel were re-animated as anthropomorphised animals like the main characters in order to better simplify the storyline. In addition, a human character named Mr. Winkie, who was originally intended to be the leader of the weasel gang, was removed from the story, making the weasels as the central villains. Reception Transcript If you want to see the transcript, click here. Release Accolades Home video release Legacy Video games Theme parks Other appearances Mole, Ratty, Mr. Toad and the weasels made some cameos in some 2001-2003 episodes of The Looney Tunes Show. Toad, Ratty, Mole, Mr. MacBadger, Cyril and two of the weasels also made an appearance in the Christmas featurette A Looney Tunes Christmas Carol, as Scrooge's old employer Fezziwig, the two Charitable Gentlemen asking for donations for the poor, an attendee of Fezziwig's party, Donald Duck's horse and two grave diggers, respectively. Mr. Toad also made a cameo appearance (as a fireman) in Who Framed Roger Rabbit, while Judge Doom's weasel henchmen were modeleted after the weasels from the film. Live-action remake Disney, with the collaboration of Allied Filmmakers, later made a of the film, which it was written and directed by actor Terry Jones, and produced by Jake Eberts and John Goldstone. The film stars Steve Coogan as Mole, Eric Idle as Ratty and Terry Jones as Toad. The film was released in the United Kingdom on October 18, 1996. In this version, all the characters are portrayed as humans with animal characteristics. Category:Walt Disney Films Category:Walt Disney Animation Studios Category:Alternate Reality